A newly disassembled bike frame sitting on a leather couch. I love it! My wife would be looking for the shotgun.
There's nothing quite like taking a bicycle fully apart and putting it back together, all clean and spinning bits running smooth.
Very satisfying. You might be hooked for life!

See now, this isn't fair! The girl can put the stripped frame on the living room furniture, where the boy can't!

Snarkypup, you are doing really well with this.

Best I can add is to agree with what you're being taught - you can avoid a lot of injury to yourself and to the bike/parts if you make sure everything is steady and the tool fits the nut right before you crank hard on anything.

My most classic wrench-slip mishap was when I was standing over a bike, tightening the bolt on the seat clamp. I had my face close to the wrench to watch what I was doing. What I learned was that if you pull up on the wrench to tighten, and it then slips, you give yourself a good sock on the chin. Ouch! Now I try to remember that lesson and tighten by pushing down, not pulling up.

Neal

^Ouch!

It's true, I can put things on the furniture. It's my furniture: I bought it. And I have three kids: that's why it's leather! A magic eraser makes it look like new again. Upstairs we have the vintage velvet couch. You'll note the frame isn't sitting on that one.

Thanks for the links on the brake levers! I'll get the hoods and the caps or whatever those were. I like the curve on the Dia Compes. It's prettier than the Shimano curve.

I'm going to start on the frame today. I'm being more of a chicken with the components, as I know those will be harder and more complex. I'm going to run the rear wheel down to the LBS and get the freehub taken off, and see if they have a brush Abarth described for cleaning gears.

I don't think I have a metal nail file (only emory boards) and believe it or not, NO clear nail polish! I'm actually really sensitive to the chemicals in nail polish remover, so I don't wear the polish. My ex had this fetish for red finger nails, too, so the only time I wore polish, I deliberately wore it in weird colors like blue and green, just to annoy him. It was not a happy relationship! I'll pick up some clear polish today, and see if my Swiss Army knife has a metal file.

Got everything I needed from Niagara. Thanks, Auchen! With the brown hoods, and brown tape, they'll look quite nice, I think. When I bought these, I'd never even heard the term "riding in the hoods." Now I know that I do that, and I want hoods to ride on!

Think about using dusted medical exam gloves. I use lacquer thinner in a stainless steel bowl for metal only. It can melt rubber, but dries clean on metal. Terrible on skin.

I'm not sure I'm clear: what are you using the lacquer thinner for?

As I told Abarth, who wore gloves yesterday and offered me some, I find the gloves almost as irritating as the grease. I have weirdly sensitive skin, and it dries out really, really easily. Latex gloves are death for that. I try not to put anything at all on my hands, and if I do, I wash it off quickly. Then I lather up with heavy duty sensitive skin moisturizer, and call it good.

So the frame is clean: no more grease at all. That concentrated Dawn is powerful stuff! Yike. There's more rust under all that dirt than I thought. The tip of the metal nail file ain't going to cut it. Off to get new tires put on my car, so I can walk over to the store and get some rust remover and clear nail polish while they fix up the Honda. I hope it works, as I'm at a bit of a loss otherwise. The rust is everywhere, in little scratches and big patches and more rhyming things. I'd have to scrape off half the paint to get it all, I think! <insert more hyperbole here> The top and bottom of the headset (?) is rusted and pitted very badly, and since it's attached to the painted part, I can't really do much with it if the rust remover doesn't do the trick. I'll keep you posted.

I did polish up a wee area with some Mother's scratch remover (that's what I have, not the Meguire's), and you guys were right: it makes a big difference. The minor stuff is all gone and the paint is noticably more glossy there. Progressing nicely, I think, if I can get the darn rust off.

Metal parts. Cassettes, serviceable bearings, etc. I got the gloves tip from an auto mechanic back in my Seattle days. To each his own. Because I use lacquer thinner and it's vicious to skin, I use gloves.

Anything small and sharpish will do the job, the tip of your Swiss Aemy knife cutting blade will work fine. Don't use it to remove paint, where rust is exposed, use the blade to scrape off the surface rust, wipe it clean with a tissue and when it's nice and bright, dab on the clear nail varnish. Hey, if you've got any of that blue varnish left that'll do for the bigger more visible blemishes. Sounds like you're well set up there!

EDIT nail varnish is the term we use in England for what you guys more correctly term nail polish - sorry, didn't mean to confuse. I did a temporary job on the badly scratched and gouged paint on the top tube of my 1953 Claud Butler using metallic blue nail polish - that was two years ago, I ended up practically repainting the top half of the tube and once it dried it looked so "OK" that I decided not to respray the frame. It's still going strong.

The accidents I remember most are when loosening chainring bolts or crank fixing bolts. That's what sends my knuckles into the teeth of chainrings. It really stings, even though it doesn't draw much blood. I must have done it a whole lot of times to earn a scar for every knuckle. I've never punched myself in the face, though.

Nowadays, I have a whole lot of positions for bracing myself. They're kinda like yoga poses.

Once a customer brought in his bike I had just worked on. He complemented me on my strength. I said, "Huh?" He loosened the BB lockring I had put on nice and tight. Actually, my upper body is weak, but I have techniques, using my pseudo-yoga positions.

Yoga, huh? My doctor told me not to do that anymore. I think I have the only disease in the world that yoga won't help! I'll have to be careful not to contort myself into a headstand, or some other "forbidden" posture while wrenching.

I tried some rust remover this evening. "Krud-Something" from Walmart. I'd forgotten how much I hate going in there. Anyway, it says to keep any painted surface wet the whole time it's working, which is half an hour. Obviously, if I paint it on, it will dry in that time. Therefore, I had to rinse before much had happened, to keep from leaving dried rust remover on the paint, which it says is bad news right on the bottle. So anyone who has used this stuff successfully, how did you do it? Seems like I'd have to dip the frame to get it to work, and that would require a great deal of "Krud-Something" to do! I also suspect the decals wouldn't enjoy it.

Speaking of decals, I used the magic eraser (Cleaning Tool of the Gods, you know) on the decals, very gently. They look much better, though it took a very careful cleaning to not remove them entirely with the eraser.

There's way more rust than I thought there would be on the frame. It seems to be everywhere, like someone sprinkled rust dust on it like glitter. So any thoughts on the rust remover are appreciated.